Breakfast with Seneca: A Stoic Guide to the Art of Living

by David Fideler

Empty is that philosopher’s argument by which no human suffering is therapeutically treated. For just as there is no use in a medical art that does not cast out the sicknesses of bodies, so too there is no use in philosophy, unless it casts out the suffering of the soul.3

“When someone doesn’t know what port he’s sailing for, no wind is favorable.”

praemeditatio malorum

“No one seems more unhappy to me than someone who has never faced adversity.”

Pass through this short moment of time living in accord with nature, and make your end cheerful, just as a ripe olive might fall, blessing the earth that bore it and grateful to the tree that gave it growth.